In the Cage

In the Cage, by Henry James
The Project Gutenberg eBook, In the Cage, by Henry James
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: In the Cage Author: Henry James Release Date: February 6, 2005 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) [eBook #1144]
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE CAGE***
Transcribed from the 1919 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
IN THE CAGE
CHAPTER I
It had occurred to her early that in her position—that of a young person spending, in framed and wired confinement, the life of a guinea-pig or a magpie —she should know a great many persons without their recognising the acquaintance. That made it an emotion the more lively—though singularly rare and always, even then, with opportunity still very much smothered—to see any one come in whom she knew outside, as she called it, any one who could add anything to the meanness of her function. Her function was to sit there with two young men—the other telegraphist and the counter-clerk; to mind the “sounder,” which was always going, to dole out stamps and postal-orders, weigh letters, answer stupid questions, give difficult change and, more than anything else,
count words as numberless as the sands of the sea, the words of the ...